


Lost but Never Found

by peregrinefalcon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Codependency, Death Eater Draco Malfoy, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Wizarding Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 05:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12006105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peregrinefalcon/pseuds/peregrinefalcon
Summary: Everything's coming together but you're just falling apart.----for hpwritersnet.tumblr.com





	Lost but Never Found

The first time Draco Malfoy felt intense apathy was when he first kissed Blaise Zabini.

Blaise Zabini was something of a fascinating figure to Draco Malfoy. He was one tall bloke,  _handsomer_  than the Devil, and did not even have a single fuck to give; Draco admired his satirical, irreverent humour, envied the nonchalance with which he carried himself, and craved the impossible calm that exuded from Zabini’s person.

_How could someone remain so carefree and indifferent in this day and age?_  Draco thought;  _he_ himself was always on the verge of mental collapse, with the threats of the Dark Lord heavy against the back of his neck and the Dark Mark burning forebodingly on his forearm. He longed to be like Zabini, on whom worries seem to slide off like water on a duck’s back.

He fancied Zabini, in away. Amongst other boys. In a way.

But out of all the boys Zabini was particularly special to Draco. He was everything Draco was not – a bright personality, charming and magnetic; confident in himself;  _comfortable_  with himself; a joker and a critic in one person. However they were also achingly similar – well-off heirs, ambiguous figures, haughty personalities, dark princes … it felt like they were on the same playing field.

Many of the other boys felt, on a certain level, alien – Pucey was otherworldly in his exuberance, and Draco sometimes felt burnt by his bright, winsome grins; Montague had a statuesque air to him, seemingly cold and unmovable, a puzzle waiting to be solved; Derrick was all sharp points and glinting like metal, his lopsided smile often nicking at Draco in an instigative manner; and Potter.

He honestly shouldn’t even talk about Potter, with his hatefully green eyes stark against brown skin, unruly black hair crowning him as the Saviour. And who was Draco? Unworthy of even being termed a nemesis. Merely a pawn in the greater picture. He could never take out the queen in this game of chess.

But Blaise seemed more … feasible. He was something familiar and … nonthreatening,  _agenda-less_. The thought of how the  _world_  was fitting together right now bothered Draco – as much as he enjoyed the influence he had, the stress of all everyone demanded out of him gnawed at him disquietingly. He was always trying to figure out how he should next play the game in order to ensure his importance and continued survival; he appreciated that Blaise was brazenly refusing to play the game. When all the other boys fell on one side or the other of this conflict, Blaise firmly stated that he was perfectly happy with sitting on the fence.

And in that way he was more approachable than the other boys Draco half-fancied.

But perhaps this made Blaise Zabini the most dangerous of them all. Draco was not prepared to deal with anyone with a greater motivation in the approaching War; he would not fraternise with the enemy, and he didn’t trust any of the Dark Lord’s greedy supporters who would use his Malfoy influence to better their own lot. But Zabini was not interested in the War, and thus stood to gain nothing out of Draco; and because of this Draco was actually willing to take a gamble with Zabini. He was willing to let Zabini get close to him.

* * *

And it seemed to Draco that Zabini was  _very close_. He and Zabini had been dancing around each other for a while.

But in a sense they  _all_  were, a nest of snakes that struck half-playfully, half-testingly at one another. You have to be prudent in choosing friends in this kind of conflict. They were all good at this game, out of necessity.

But Blaise knew  _exactly_  how to get under someone’s skin; a talent that Draco both loathed and loved. It was as if no one else knew him better than Blaise did; yet, on the other hand, Blaise seemed hellbent on using this knowledge against him.

Not maliciously or threateningly; only a symbol of trust wrapped up in a warning of sorts.  _I know how to make you uneasy, make you dance … this power is mine, but I won’t use it._  It warmed Draco up with some sick trepidation – the only logical strategy to this was to just play along, some fucked up game of emotional politics that took Draco’s mind off of more tormenting obligations.

So he played his game with Zabini. Hands that lingered upon shoulders for a moment too long; eyes that settled on a wrong spot, or perhaps stared almost rudely; snide remarks that rode the fine line between friendly and predatory. It made Draco’s head pound when Zabini flashed those stark-white teeth at him and intoned, ‘Nice posture at practice today, Malfoy.’

Something that any other member of the Quidditch team could have said somehow niggled at Draco; the pleasant feeling of words weighing much more than they look, the potential of something enticing. Something simple that he could throw himself into; rather than a stressful, nearly cosmic conflict that he was beginning to feel more and more disillusioned with.

And just then his good mood soured, and he felt envy shoot up his heart like acid; would that his life were not centered around that blasted War. Would that he didn’t need to worry about his neck day in and day out, concern himself with the exact details of the plan that all depended on  _him_ ; would that he were given a choice to say  _no_ , to say that he wasn’t his parents and just allowed to  _live like an ordinary boy like Zabini_  –

_No_ , he stopped himself, and forced down the malice in his gullet. Even if he had a choice, he would have chosen to do the same bloody thing.

That’s just the kind of fucking idiot he was.

* * *

By November he could hardly stand it anymore. It was eating away at him, slowly, a carpenter ant chewing through a foundation until the house finally collapsed over him. The farther along he was with this enterprise, the more he feared its conclusion. He could not yet clearly see its significance for him, but he feared his ‘disposal’ as soon as his task was completed and his purpose – served.

And he didn’t want to die just yet; Merlin, he was just  _sixteen_ , let him live.  _Let me live and let the whole world be damned_ , he thought, sour guilt building up his chest as his knuckles whitened around the book he was holding. He was filled with a sense of confused unease; the sort of aching knowingness of an outcome, but the refusal to contemplate its actuality.

‘You alright, Malfoy?’ Nott asked, his gaze hovering about Draco’s hand.  _Clever Nott, always quiet but observant_ , Draco thought with a sinking heart. Theo was always close to him, and he feared that perhaps Theo knew him to well. It troubled Draco that, this essentially meant that he could never hide anything from Theo. Regardless, he wouldn’t drag Nott into his …  _business_.

‘Yeah, I’m alright, Theo,’ he replied as he dropped his shoulders and loosened the death grip on his Transfigurations textbook. ‘Come on, let’s go to class.’

* * *

Draco wished that Theo would get out of his business. Unfortunately, Theo was a good friend, which meant that he was a terrible friend for someone like Draco Malfoy. After shooting concerned looks at him for two weeks and failing to evoke a response from Draco, Theo sent Draco’s next closest ‘friend’ to him – he sent Blaise bloody Zabini.

Draco was half a metre into the blasted essay for Slughorn when Zabini entered the empty common room. Most of the other students had left for dinner, but Draco did not feel like eating recently. He felt as if everything were a sort of vague, bad illusion that he could sort of fade out of if he just acted like he wasn’t really there; wasn’t really a human being. But eventually people always notice when you’re starting to become a ghost.

‘Nott told me you weren’t yourself recently.’  _Fuck Nott and his considerateness. Fuck Nott and his concern_ , Draco thought as Blaise settled down on the chaise beside his armchair and spoke in that cool, unruffled manner that ruffled Draco’s feathers in as many directions as possible, lately.

‘– And I happen to agree,’ he continued, and Draco wanted to push him away for caring, to push all of his friends far,  _far_  away from himself, because he didn’t want them to see him at his weakest.

He glared at Zabini, composed and collected in his pressed Slytherin robes, his face kept artfully neutral – just the way Draco liked it. Everything about Zabini was almost clinical, orderly, logical; and Draco was nothing like that now, with his crumpled robes, dull hair, and heavy eyes. And he desperately want to plunge into Zabini’s calm.

‘Really, mate, if there’s anything I can do –’ Zabini began to offer, but Draco had already begun to move.

He reached out and grabbed Zabini’s face – and the other boy fell silent.  _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_  – ‘Just shut up, Zabini,’ he managed before he kissed Zabini furiously.

Zabini’s shock shattered his composure and Draco felt him jump beneath his touch. It disappointed him that his composed, ever-statuesque friend could be caught by so mundane an emotion as surprise. But on the other hand it pleased him in a terrible way to know that he had been the one to cause it.

After a moment of startled stillness Blaise kissed him back, his movements blurred still by bewilderment. But Draco kissed him like this was the surest thing in his life for months, like he desperately needed it, like if he didn’t, he would implode any moment. But he felt like he was imploding right now.

He kissed Blaise like he wanted to be sure of what he wanted.

And Blaise simply gave him what he wanted. He didn’t see a good enough reason to say  _no_  to Draco, and besides he was bored. That was the worst part of being Blaise Zabini – the cost of his indifference to everything was his devotion towards anything. It wasn’t so bad a price to pay, in his opinion.

So he kissed Draco like he was killing time.

* * *

‘Fuck,’ Draco muttered when he came to a moment later. Now he’d mindlessly threw himself at Zabini, he can’t take that back again. Confusion chilled his bones like he had just leapt into the Black Lake, and shock clung to him like wet clothes.

He was not confused nor shocked regarding his emotions towards Zabini – it was more so the manner that he had executed the idea he had been toying with for the past few months. He acted on  _impulse_ , without judging the circumstance and weighing the consequences before hand; he was fearful of what this lack of control reflected of himself.

‘What?’ Blaise drawled lazily, his eyes still hazy like a cat’s, part-open in interest, part-narrowed in perplexity. Draco knew that now he owed Zabini an explanation. But he disliked all manners of explanation.

‘Why did I do that?’ He muttered aloud whilst kicking himself over mentally. He’s just thrown in all his cards in, and now he needed to back out of the game. He couldn’t maintain this whilst worrying about the Dark Lord’s orders, he didn’t have the  _energy_  – but oh Merlin, did he need to find some sort of release, somewhere to pour all the  _human_  parts of himself into in order to survive the monstrous thing his life was becoming.

‘Shouldn’t I be the person asking that question?’ Blaise cocked an eyebrow cooly, and Draco tried his best to look apologetic; although he never got much practice in that department.

He wanted to say something but the words only floated disjointedly around his head, and Draco found it difficult to find an excuse that would not compromise his …  _position_. A silence stretched out between them like a spider’s web, except Draco felt more like the fly who flew into it than the spider who spun it.

Zabini merely looked at him with the same detached interest that Draco had come to find enthralling. The corner of his mouth was crooked in an easy smile, utterly blasé in a way that was comforting and insignificant. ‘Fuck it, who needs a reason, right?’ he hummed as he leaned towards Draco. ‘I’m too bored to care,’ the words dropped liltingly, lazily from his tongue.

‘That’s good enough for me if it’s good enough for you,’ Draco swallowed back the burning apprehension that had been sloshing within him for months. He reached out and gripped Blaise as if he were a lifeline.

‘I only need you to be here,’ he told Blaise, his demand heavy in the air, his meaning not exactly what it must have sounded like. No, Blaise was not a lifeline. He was merely the a piece of driftwood, something to keep him afloat but not help him find his way. Draco Malfoy was doomed to be lost, but at least that’s better than drowning.

‘I’d gladly oblige,’ Blaise slid a hand around the back of Draco’s neck. Draco looked into his eyes and found no emotion. It quelled the uneasy flame within him.

He lunged at Blaise; and the sinking feeling of insouciance spread within him, cool and opaque as stone.

Everything be damned. Let him have this before it all sinks.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, constructive criticism is encouraged and appreciated!
> 
> Come say hi to me on tumblr: durmstranqs.tumblr.com


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